(Illustrated above) A financial trader depends on many elements of his office environment to accomplish his work. From the “yelling distance” proximity of key colleagues, to the availability of specialized computing and communication tools, to the in house services that allow him to work late, he feels that his firm has done everything it can to support him as he strives to sit at his desk and focus on maximizing profits for his group.

A scientist organizes the spatial layout and bench assignments of her clinical lab to promote frequent, unplanned communication and the effective execution of structured research work. There are few “offices,” and most of the computing work-stations are placed on or near benches where technicians run experiments.

An architect’s desktop computer is situated in an open floor plan room dedicated to a single building project. The walls of the space are covered with large printouts of current work. She typically does not have to go very far to have an informal conversation with anyone on her project team — though she still finds the group to be too hierarchical.

What size and variety of organizations might your team be targeting with your interactive application? How similar are these environments to each other?

How could specific cultural characteristics of targeted workers’ environments, such as shared norms, values, and customs, impact the strategic direction of your team’s computing tool?

How have these characteristics changed over time, and what directions are they trending in now?

What breakdowns in work practice are currently caused or aggravated by environmental factors? Could these breakdowns represent potential opportunities for your product?

How does the concentration or distribution of related physical spaces currently impact knowledge workers’ practices?

How do physical contexts shape workers’ communicative, cooperative, and collaborative efforts?

How are important work artifacts “located” within physical space and cultural zones? What understood norms surround their use in different environmental circumstances?

What attitudes do targeted knowledge workers have regarding their own mobility? What activities do they expect to be able to accomplish at various locations?

How might different models and understandings of these environmental factors allow your team to envision application concepts that could essentially “belong” in targeted contexts?

Do you have enough information to usefully answer these and other envisioning questions? What additional research, problem space models, and design concepting could valuably inform your team’s application envisioning efforts?